Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Movie Smackdown Comix!

Lots of our readers seem to really like the less-than-reverent way we treat the publicity stills that the studios put out to promote their films.  Basically, I caption them up using Comic Life Magiq on my iMac (which means you can't blame the individual reviewers if you don't like them -- it's not their fault!).  The idea is to allow these very common photos to become unique on our site where they can make their own artistic statement independent of the reviews.  Well, now, we've collected them all in one place where you can look at them full-screen, or even play them as a slide-show.  Check out http://www.moviesmackdown.tv and see for yourself.

Hancock (2008) -vs- I am Legend (2007)

Where There's a Will, There's a Way

The Smackdown. It's summer and if Will Smith keeps to form, he'll surely add a few more zeroes to his bank balance. It is beyond dispute: The last 14 movies featuring the Fresh Prince grossed $4.7 billion worldwide. Will Smith defines bankable movie star.

From "Bad Boys" on, he's fed a growing film identity through a series of shrewd, quirky career choices. More than once, a familiar Will Smith character saves humanity from oblivion ("Independence Day," both "Men in Black," "I, Robot") with a combination of wit, attitude and cool. He further refined that persona last December when "I am Legend" hit the cineplex. The global box office ($584 million) shows audiences are fully comfortable in the company of this movie hero who's sprinkled a dash of nobility onto his film profile.

A different character trait flavors the mix in Smith's newest release, "Hancock." Will's name on the marquee assures "Hancock" will open strongly, but will it sustain? This hero is hard to like. That's the heart of our Smackdown!: Does "Hancock" build upon Will Smith's demonstrated star power, or is it a step back from "I am Legend?"

The Challenger. "Hancock" gives us a hero with the powers of "Superman" and the personality of a charm school dropout. He drinks a lot, and doesn't much care if you know it. When trouble erupts, no need for a Bat signal: You can usually find Hancock laid out on a park bench and he looks like he'd rather not be bothered. Bad guys start shooting up the freeway and Hancock flies to the rescue, but extracts a fearful price. Cars are wrecked, the freeway is torn up and the getaway car is impaled on the tower of the Capitol Records building. He doesn't handle the superhero thing very well, and people resent Hancock. They lay on the abuse after he wrecks a train while saving motorist Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) stalled on the tracks. Ray is a public relations consultant who decides there's nothing wrong with Hancock that can't be cured with a positive PR spin. The makeover lands Hancock in prison, then out with a form-fitting costume and a freshly scrubbed personality. His heroism is now only slightly less messy. This tale, rewritten by Vince Gilligan from Vincent Ngo's long-dormant screenplay, takes a sharp left turn away from a predictable ending. Ray's soccer-mom wife, Mary (Charlize Theron) reveals a big secret that complicates everything. From this point on nothing is the same and very little makes sense.

The Champion.  By contrast, writers Mark Protosevich and Akiva Goldsman give Will Smith a more direct story line in "I am Legend." A medical breakthrough lauded as a cure for cancer goes haywire. A virus breaks out and the humans it doesn't kill outright become blood thirsty monsters. For several years Dr. Robert Neville (Smith) works on a vaccine using his own, uninfected, blood. He dutifully transmits a daily radio signal from Manhattan, imploring anyone to respond. In this nightmare landscape someone finally does and saves Neville from the attacking zombies. Mary (Anna Braga) and her little boy are headed toward a "survivors' colony" she believes is in Vermont. Neville's testing is showing positive signs and perhaps they'll all go to Vermont. The monsters have other ideas. They discover where Neville lives and lay siege to his house. A lethal showdown shows us who survives, who does not and what becomes of the human race.

The Scorecard. Both movies give you a lot to like, for different reasons. You won't be disappointed by the level of special effects; they are excellent. Manhattan is a wasteland in "Legend" inhabited by lions and monsters. Will Smith is equally compelling in both movies. "Legend" gives audiences the sort of star turn you've seen in his last few movies: He's strong, heady and very directed. Even noble. Luckily, Smith is strong enough to carry the story because it's really just him and some snarling zombies.

In "Hancock" he gets some help. Smith's character is surly, anti-social and probably smells. He always makes a mess (in hilarious, anatomically unlikely ways) when resolving a confrontation. Ray doesn't see this repellent drunk as a lost cause and commits to help because Hancock saved him from an oncoming train. Jason Bateman fits his role perfectly. An even larger story element appears in the form of Mary Embrey. Once you know her secret -- and I won't tell you here -- the entire movie changes. That may explain the movie's promotional strategy and why you don't see Charlize Theron featured in the clips. She's the only Academy Award winner here and her promotional value is muted.

Can we say whether Will Smith has taken a step forward or back? Read on.

Wanted (2008) -vs- Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)

Angie Get Your Gun

The Smackdown.  Angelina Jolie loves guns.  On top of knowing this, I have a sneaking suspicion that studios love Angelina Jolie with guns because most men do.  Who wouldn't want to see the gorgeous wife/mistress/girlfriend of Brad Pitt kick into high gear and kick ass while shaking her own?  So, while a million wives and girlfriends hold their lovers closer this weekend, let's entertain these men's ultimate fantasy -- a movie smackdown where one Angelina Jolie with guns faces off with another Angelina Jolie with guns.  When such doppleganger femme fatales clash, who comes out on top?  When the smoke clears, will it be Mr. and Mrs. Smith's Jane Smith or Wanted's Fox that'll have women checking their boyfriends' internet histories to avoid becoming the next Jennifer Aniston?

 The Challenger.  Wanted is an interesting case of comic book adaptations.  Michael Brandt and Dennis Haas adapted Mark Millar's graphic novel while MIllar was finishing the series.  The result was a screenplay that barely resembled the comic series, which focuses on a world where disgusting villains have massacred all superheroes and now move on to fighting one another. The film Wanted focuses on Wesley Gibbons (James McAvoy), a nerdy pushover recruited by Jolie's Fox to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Fraternity, a organization of ambiguously powered assassins who literally read the threads of fate to determine their targets.  This "Loom of Fate" allows the Fraternity to keep good and evil in check.  With Jolie's help, McAvoy must take out the man who killed his father, the notoriously ruthless Cross.  Highly flawed, Wanted is nevertheless an ultra-violent rookie film that'll thrill action buffs with its obligatory set pieces and bombastic stunts.  This movie is about action more than story; expect it and just enjoy McAvoy and Jolie tearing through bad guys in frenetic, stylized combat.

The Defending Champion.  Written by Simon Kinberg, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a film student's thesis turned summer tent-pole power flick turned celebrity love scandal.   The film follows a a couple stuck in a loveless marriage, living totally separate lives in suburbia.  What the couples do not know is that the other is  a highly-trained assassin working for a rival organization.  When the couples are hired to take one another out, far-fetched hilarity ensues in this romantic comedy wrapped in action movie clothing.  Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie have instant on-screen chemistry, and both are extremely believable as modern day assassins with flawed, quirky personalities.  This credibility helps anchor the rather contrived and implausible plot the movie relies on to make a rather smart metaphorical exploration of marriage.  It is literally a battle of the sexes.  Exciting and sexy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is an enjoyable movie for both men and women as long as they get past the two characters' obliviousness.

Wall-E (2008) -vs- Toy Story (1995)

Toying with Our Feelings

The Smackdown.  Something happened last night that I never thought could happen.  I waited in line for a midnight showing of a G-rated movie.  I stood in the lobby of the local AMC 20, next to a skinny, teenage kid dressed up as a boxy, yellowish robot with tank treads, and stared across the hall at a line of people waiting to see "Wanted," the brash, gun-toting, slap-your-mother ultra-violent Mark Millar-adaptation. And as I watched them, I thought to myself, "Heh, losers."  Obviously they had chosen the wrong movie to see that night. How could they possibly want to see anything else other than Pixar's newest, possibly greatest masterpiece, a two-hour-long space-opera with barely any dialogue about robots who sift through garbage?  It was "Wall-E."  And it was on.

So, today, it's "Wall-E," Pixar's newest advancement in computer-animated awesomeness, against the grand-daddy of them all, the first authentic feature-length computer-animated film ever, "Toy Story."  We all know the deal there -- toys come to life.  Done.  We're hooked. And ever since the film's first screening, we've been running out of our front doors shouting "To Infinity and Beyond!" as we left for work each morning (you haven't?).  So let's pit one set of talking inanimate objects against another set of sort-of-talking inanimate objects.  Let the best merchandise win!

The Challenger.  Way, way back, back before "Toy Story" was produced and Pixar was the animated behemoth that it is today, Andrew Stanton created Wall-E. A small, "short-circuit"-styled robot (whose name is actually an acronym for the phrase "Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class") Wall-E is the last of a line of robots left on Earth to clean up the mess we've made. Due to years of gorging consumerism, the planet has been left a giant trash-heap, too littered to possibly sustain life. In a grand gesture of social responsibility, the mega-conglomerate Buy 'N Large Corporation has encouraged humanity to take a 5 year "vacation" away from the planet, allowing their robots stay behind and restore Earth to a livable state while we all relax pool-side. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned.

"Wall-E" opens approximately 700 years after humanity's vacation should have ended and Earth is still largely a junkyard. All of the Buy 'N Large robots have been deactivated save for our our protagonist, Wall-E, who spends his days compressing trash into neat, stackable blocks and sorting through garbage for interesting knick-knacks that he can bring home with him (Wall-E is a bit of a pack-rat.) Unfortunately for Wall-E, this job is a lonely one. Aside from his pet cockroach, he is the only real inhabitant of this forgotten world, whose experiences with love are limited to the live-action musicals he's found amid the trash-heaps.

However, this all changes when a large spaceship suddenly lands near Wall-E's home and deploys EVE, a sleek, flying, all-business, blaster-wielding probe, with whom Wall-E instantly falls in love.  It is Wall-E's courtship of EVE that then pushes the narrative, sending the timid little robot on an adventure into outer space and back to the humanity that had long forgotten him. The film is fun, jaw-dropping-ly beautiful and packed with some high-concept ideas, but will all that be enough to knock off a defending champ that has been called one of the top ten animated films EVER? Read on to find out!

The Defending Champion.  1995 marked a new era of cinema. Computer animation had yet to prove itself with regard to feature film, having since acted primarily as a complementary special effects vehicle and rarely as a stand-alone medium over extended time periods. And then seemingly out of nowhere, "Toy Story" happened and told the story of an outdated, wooden cowboy doll Woody's rivalry with Buzz Lightyear, a flashy, brash space-hero action-figure over the attentions of their young owner.  For the last thirteen years, this film's been a measuring stick for the animated genre. Named by the American Film Institute (during their evaluation of top genre films) as one of the top 10 greatest animated films in the history of cinema, "Toy Story" began what has become an continuous series of successes for the endlessly imaginative production company Pixar. The words "To Infinity and Beyond"  are a staple of popular culture, referenced time and again in areas ranging from entertainment to mathematics (it's true, wikipedia it) and it is still a major favorite of children and adults today. With its breathtaking animation, smart comedy and warming-ly intimate story, it has been easily the fighter to fear when it comes to animated throw-downs.

Get Smart (2008) -vs- The Nude Bomb (1980)

Who's Sorry Now?

The Smackdown.  The Re-Make Express keeps rollin' its way down the box office tracks with no end in sight.  There are re-makes of classic movies.  Re-makes of classic TV shows (is “Three’s Company: The Movie” so far fetched)?  Re-makes of Re-makes!  The latest ‘re-imagining’ turns out to be the beloved "Get Smart," the show about a bumbling spy, who despite his unknowing ineptitude, thwarted comedic villains intent on world domination every week on TV.  I watched the show as a kid and so badly wanted some shoes with a secret phone in them.  I still do.  And with merchandising what it is, I'll probably get a pair that'll hold an iPhone.  Anyway, they tried to re-make the TV series almost three decades ago with Don Adams still in the role of Maxwell Smart and now it's Steve Carell exploring a brand-new kind of "Office" over at the place called "Control."  The Smack is On!

The Challenger. “Get Smart” (the 2.0 version) opens with the classic theme and Secret Agent 86 walking down a long hall past high-tech security doors to a simple telephone booth that drops him down into Control Headquarters.  But this isn’t your Grandpa’s Control Headquarters.  Nope.  This is the New and Improved Control (with a healthy budget for all the CGI). 

In a bit of inspired casting, Steve Carell assumes the Maxwell Smart role, but here he’s a Computer Analyst who dreams of becoming a Field Agent.  It seems Control is more like High School with its clicks of the "cool" spies (the Jocks) who look down on the Computer Nerds (the, uhm, Nerds). 

After several attempts Max finally passes the field agent exam but is kept where he ‘can do the most good’ -- in the office.  That is until the evil, criminal organization known as KAOS attacks HQ, and picks off Control Agents around the globe.  So Max gets his chance, partnered with the more experienced Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway).  There’s enough globetrotting and well-executed action to keep today’s audience’s satisfied.   

There are several stand out performances from Alan Arkin as the Chief, Dwayne (‘Don’t Call Me The Rock’) Johnson as Uber Agent 23, and Terence Stamp as evil Kaos Arms Dealer, Siegfried.  Don’t blink or you’ll miss the cameos by Bill Murray (underused as Agent 13, disguised as a Tree) and -- if you’re really a fan of the series -- you’ll recognize Bernie Kopell  (the original Siegfried).

The Defending Champion. “The Nude Bomb” reminds us there's only one Don Adams who played the loveable, bumbling Agent 86 on the Mel Brooks-Buck Henry TV series “Get Smart” from 1965-1970.  In this theatrical movie, a decade later Maxwell Smart is back in action, trying to thwart Kaos, still up to it’s old tricks.  This time, a villain (who wears pantyhose over his head) has developed a ‘nude bomb’ that destroys all known fabric.  Unless demands are met, the world will be naked!  (A proposition that’s either good or bad, depending on who you’re standing next to). 

Very much like the TV show, this movie is gag heavy.  The budget, for the time, must have been substantial with new and improved gadgets (Stapler Phone anyone?) and a Bachelor Pad that’d make Hugh Hefner jealous (a car rises in the middle of the living room for quick access).

What’s missing?  How about series regulars Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as the Chief?!   Instead we get (the presumably Younger and Blonder) Andrea Howard as Agent 22 and (the serviceable) Dana Elcar as the (new?) Chief.  Same Old Max with a different supporting cast.  That’s like wearing a new suit with the same ole shoe phone -- it just doesn’t match. 

The Scorecard. “Would you believe..?”  Both films have virtually the same plot!  Kaos has Bombs they’ll rain down on the world unless it’s paid off.  In the “Nude Bomb” it’s a, well, nude bomb, but a bomb by any other name…

The Update kept all the key elements from the show, the gadgets and the comedy, while creating more developed characters who made us care for them.  If you put both these movies in a time capsule, opened it in a hundred years and watched them they’d (for better of worse) accurately portray the decades they were made.   

Summertime and the Smackin' is Easy...

Summertime and there’s action aplenty inside the MOVIE SMACKDOWN ring...  We're adding new SmackRefs to our already outstanding critics... AMC has picked us as the "Site of the Week"... We have an entire site just for the photos and captions readers like...

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The Incredible Hulk (2008) -vs- Hulk (2003)

Do Over: The Green, Green Glow of Hulk

The Smackdown.  HULK SMASH!  I'm sorry, but I had to; it's just such a funny, quirky comic book phrase.  It's not often you get a Smackdown as clean as this one either where a project has been re-cast, re-conceived and the first director has been sent packing.  When you consider that The Incredible Hulk is the franchise follow-up to Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk, you have to take into mind that it's the new Marvel Studios steering the cinematic wheel.  Its recent Iron Man proved a ridiculously profitable and critical hit but, quite frankly, I shuddered at the thought of a second motion picture tackling this heroic green figure after the first installment created such a controversial cinematic history (gamma Hulk poodles anyone?).  I can see the halls of Marvel Studios one or two weeks ago, brimming with newly starched suits and promiscuous congratulations over Iron Man's $530 million plus heist.  Now, a bunch of execs sit around a table -- bleary-eyed, ties loose, coffee cups empty, cell phones nearby -- hoping their new Hulk shares more than the color green with a one dollar bill.   So while those overpaid studio execs worry over that, let's have a Hulk-sized SMACKDOWN between Ang Lee's Hulk and Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk.  May the best conflicted angst-ridden monster win.

The Challenger.  The Hulk returns rebooted under the directorial guidance of Transporter director Louis Leterrier off a script originally penned by Zak Penn and rewritten by Edward Norton.  In The Incredible Hulk, Norton plays Stan Lee's classic Bruce Banner, a simple scientist whose brilliance leads to a tragic lab accident.  Now a fugitive from a military general who wishes to make him a weapon, Banner longs for a cure to his monstrous alter-ego and the forced isolation it demands.  Like Stan Lee's original Hulk, The Incredible Hulk focuses on Banner's struggle to contain this monstrous Neanderthal lurking inside him.  In fact, it's the film's petrol, blasting through Bourne-style chase scenes and WWF-style mutant throwdowns.  But like the green beast himself, Letterrier's film loses a bit of its humanity when it goes "Hulk."  Coupled with somewhat awkward pacing, the film may leave audiences like Bruce Banner after a "hulk-out": scratching your head asking where the hell am I and what the hell just happened?  Comparing the shooting script to the finished film, there are a plethora of scenes missing -- mostly character-oriented -- that would've better balanced the film.  Banner's therapy session with his lover's new boyfriend and Banner's attempted suicide are among them.  On top of this, some of the dialogue -- no matter how good the actor, or how green -- just can't be pulled off.

The Defending Champion.  Ang Lee's Hulk hit theaters riding the wave of Spider-Man and X-Men.  Lee (Ang, not Stan) brought his trademark abstract thinking and art house sensibilities to the jolly green juggernaut who likes to pound things.  In theory, it doesn't sound like that great a match.  However, Ang Lee's Hulk embraces elegance, fostering a certain self-contained pacing that earns admiration.  In the film, Eric Bana's Banner has not yet become the Hulk.  Instead, he is a semi-brilliant scientist unaware of his own mutated genetic structure -- modeled by his abusive father on the regenerative abilities of starfish and reptiles. 

Get Smart (2008) -vs- Johnny English (2003)

Spying's Easy; Comedy's Hard

The Smackdown. Summer is here with new versions of familiar entertainments: A new Batman, a new Hell Boy, and now another spy spoof.

Every spy sendup owes something in spirit to Maxwell Smart. As the main character on TV's "Get Smart", Agent 86 set the gold standard for goofy storylines, ridiculous gadgets and non-stop laughs. 138 episodes enshrined the standing of creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. This success inspired a  second television series and a pair of Maxwell Smart movies. Audiences forever link Don Adams with the character he played. People may not know where they first heard phrases like "Would you believe," and "Missed it by THAT much." In recent years major studios churned out variations like burgers at a drive-thru: "Austin Powers," "Charlie's Angels," "The Pink Panther" and "Undercover Brother," among others. A solid, lower key effort came in 2003: "Johnny English" with Rowan Atkinson. It failed to find a mass audience, but its human scale recalls the material that inspired it.

Now, a new "Get Smart" hits the screen with Steve Carell playing a different Maxwell Smart. In fact, this material is very different from the original  --  and that's our Smackdown!: Does "Get Smart" climb atop the short pile of spy sendups... or get pushed back by "Johnny English?"

The Challenger. Forty years after our first exposure to "Get Smart," Max is now an intelligence analyst in Washington, DC with CONTROL but dying to be an agent. His chance comes after an attack on CONTROL headquarters compromises a number of agents. Max goes on the trail of renegade nuclear weapons, but this bumbler's not going alone. He's been assigned to work with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) and their chemistry is strained; she has field experience, he has insecurity and attitude. Those traits are on full display as their hunt for Siegfried (Terence Stamp) and the evil guys from KAOS moves the action to Chechnya, Russia and Los Angeles. More than once Max and 99 escape death by a whisker (a standoff with a large thug becomes a group hug) and they draw closer with each misadventure. Along the way we see the requisite gadgets that fizzle (the Cone of Silence, a miniature crossbow in a pocket knife) and quirky coworkers (Alan Arkin, Dwayne Johnson, Bill Murray). In a sputtering mix of comedy and action Max and Agent 99 wind up in L.A. where nuclear annihilation / a happy ending hang in the balance. You can guess how writers Tom Astle and Matt Ember resolve matters.

The Defending Champ. Writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and William Davies ramp up a smaller crisis in "Johnny English." Their hero is smug and clueless like TV's Maxwell Smart, and clearly out of his depths when trouble strikes. Johnny English (Rowan Atkinson) is elevated to secret agent from paper shuffler when his screwup eliminates the cream of Britain's MI5 agents. A disgruntled French tycoon  --  Pascal Sauvage  --  steals England's crown jewels in a plot to leverage an ancient but rejected family claim to the British throne. The chase takes English to France and back to England. More than once Johnny is snatched from oblivion by his assistant, Bough, and by fellow spy Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia). Will Johnny ever learn to handle his gadgets? Things don't look good as Sauvage (John Malkovich) blackmails his way to the British throne (any wonder why this movie didn't catch fire here?). Will Sauvage be crowned king? Will a poodle replace the English bulldog? Vous devez regarder le film!

Without Limits (1998) -vs- Prefontaine (1997)

Speed Kills: The Role of a (Short) Lifetime

The Smackdown. With the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Track & Field coming up in Eugene, more than a few people will be thinking about the runner who pretty much owned Hayward Field back in the day, Steve Prefontaine.  It's been a decade since Hollywood made two films back-to-back about the legendary distance runner, and you may be tempted to go rent one of them to see for yourself what the fuss was all about.

Track's been on my mind for other reasons, too.  My wife and I have a film shooting right now in Los Angeles, "Miles from Nowhere," about a high-school athlete who decides to go for a sub-four minute mile.  During the time we were polishing up our screenplay's last draft before production, we looked for a little inspiration and watched both "Prefontaine" and "Without Limits" within a couple of days of each other. It was like a film school assignment to see what different production teams and actors could do with essentially the same source material. But there was another element here, for me, that put even this challenge through a separate creative filter.

Steve Prefontaine wasn't actually a legend to me, you see, because I was there when he was breaking all these incredible records.

As a native Oregonian I had seen him win the state high school two-mile in a barn-burning race when I was just a kid, then I had gone to the University of Oregon at the same time he attended and ran, and was working at a local TV station as an intern at the time of his death. Later, I used to log a lot of miles running on the wood-chip trail dedicated to him, "Pre's Trail." I can't claim that I knew him, but I saw him on campus (vividly remember watching him chug some beer at Duffy's Tavern) and when he ran at Hayward field during my freshman year, my dorm (Douglass-Walton) faced the track and we literally watched and cheered from our room window.

I don't imagine too many people are ever going to watch both of these films so our Smackdown answers a practical question: if you want to see one single film that captures the essence of Steve Prefontaine, which one should you see?

Iron Man (2008) -vs- Batman Begins (2005)

Self-Made Heroes

The Smackdown.  It's been a dark time for comic book movies since Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" and Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns."  Over the past two years, "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," "X-Men: The Last Stand," and "Spider-Man 3" raised red flags with audiences and critics alike: is the comic book movie Golden Age finally imploding upon itself?  If Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics newly-launched production company, has an answer, it's "NO!"  Jon Favreau's "Iron Man" marks Marvel Studios first independently-owned production (distributed by Paramount).  It follows the high-tech adventures of billionaire Tony Stark, as he soars into the world as the red and gold avenger, Iron Man.  Amongst us comic book nerds, when we're not debating if Wolverine could take Superman, a frequent discussions is how Iron Man is Marvel's Batman.  So in honor of us comic nerds' long-standing debates, we'll see how Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins" stands against the high-flying, repulsor-blasting "Iron Man."

The Challenger.  Meet Tony Stark: womanizer, billionaire, alcoholic, genius.  A child prodigy, Tony Stark is responsible for the world's most deadly military weapons, developing and funding his inventions via Stark Industries.  Robert Downey Jr. plays our hero, a self-absorbed braggart who suffers a mid-life crisis after being abducted by Middle East terrorists and barely escaping with his life.  Determined to make a difference in this dangerous world he's help create, Downey's Stark takes to building a suit capable of mitigating the disasters in the world.  Surprisingly funny and well-acted, but also with its serious moments, "Iron Man" is a testament to movie audiences that comic book movies are not dying.  Jon Favreau's sharp direction and Downey's well-thought acting clearly form the backbone of this avenger's journey, an adventure that sometimes suffers from clunky pacing and unsure character moments.

The Defending Champion.  As a movie icon, Batman was all but dead following Joel Schumacher's nipple-clad, hyper-colored "Batman & Robin."  Somehow, Christopher Nolan relaunched this franchise by tossing aside the previous films and starting from scratch.  And when we say scratch, we mean scratch -- a young, vengeful Bruce Wayne wandering the world, lost in his own misery.  There is no Batman.  Nolan's psychological action-thriller traces Wayne's journey in becoming the legendary Dark Knight, and his first attempt to defeat a overzealous terrorist mastermind who shares Batman's hate of corruption but wishes to eradicate it using genocide.  Complex and a tad heavy-handed, "Batman Begins" captivates audiences with great casting, amazing action set pieces, and a darker tone that encourages a contemplative movie-going experience.